HoTS free to play in China if you buy WoL - Page 4

On November 30 2012 03:31 SupLilSon wrote:
Damn, sucks they won't do this for anywhere else. I might actually consider getting HOTS if they did... ;(

On November 30 2012 05:59 iKill wrote:


Yes. It's China. They really, really, really, really do not want their people to come into contact with western culture.

Let me elaborate. The people who are going "why would they block a game, you can just chat with people" really have no idea what chinese censorship is about. The chinese have turned censorship into an art form. System criticism is illegal, and if you go out on the street and criticise the government, they WILL apprehend you pretty quickly. The chinese govt. is paranoid that people in other countries will disclose things to the chinese masses that are sensitive and / or offensive to the Party. Ever heard of Tiananmen Square? I assure you, Li Xu and Chen Hau certainly haven't.

Now, chinese services like Sino Weibo etc are easy, because 1) mostly chinese people sign up there and 2) they're in the govt.'s pockets, so they get censored left and right. Controversial stories are straight up blocked, leading to mass ignorance. Wanna know why Google / Facebook / Youtube / Twitter are unavailable in China? It's because they're western companies unwilling to submit to the draconian censorship measures China requires, so they'd rather block themselves off from 1 billion people.

Same thing with games. There are a wide variety of reasons why Blizzard has to partner with domestic chinese businesses to distribute their games in China, but one of them is definitely that the PRC is NOT comfortable with their people gaming on servers that aren't tightly controlled and aren't inhabited only by chinese people.

To put it bluntly, they're scared shitless of foreigners preaching the wonders of "Not China" to their people.

On November 30 2012 06:32 chosenkerrigan wrote:


Lol I love how people read about China on CNN and think they are expert about this country. I have no problem doing whatever I want when I was in China and I never got "apprehended pretty quickly" or have any trouble "come into contact with western culture" because I can assure you, that I know a lot more about west than you do for the east.
I don't like the internet censorship in China but you won't be killed for using a VPN and you will have no problem playing SC2 with whomever you want. Jesus.

On November 30 2012 11:25 Xpace wrote:


I got on Google.ca and Google.uk, but not Google.com, in a hotel lobby in Shanghai. YouTube was really, really slow; Facebook was fine.

On November 30 2012 16:37 larse wrote:
Hots is not free to play in china. It's completely free if you have the 90yuan version of the wol. Free to play is a dubious term sometimes.

On November 30 2012 02:11 Zeon0 wrote:
i guess 90rmb are a lot more for the average chinese then 14usd/9gbp of the average american/brit?

On November 30 2012 01:58 forumtext wrote:
http://www.wfbrood.com/sc2/xinwen/sc2_71812.html
http://sc2.163.com/pay

I just saw this news in wfbrood. If you purchase the Chinese version of WoL now and you will get HOTS for free! This seem to be a great deal consider WoL cost 90 rmb atm which is around 14 USD or 9 GBP.

Anyone know if Europe/US/KR will get a similar deal?

On November 30 2012 17:28 dribYLrae wrote:


If you pre-order HOTS in Germany at amazon, you get a free beta key. Two of my friends and I preordered and received the key via mail.

On their page, they say there is only a limited amount of them though.

On November 30 2012 02:11 ONEofUS wrote:
around 14 USD, wow thats nothing for a game like this